Indian Education System

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 26 Oct 2015 21:10

Saars, why can we cannot reduce the stress on our kids. These are smart folks being thrown away for no good reason.

If the fellow is unable to take the load of 7-8 courses per semester why not drop the load to 4-5 courses per semester and he takes a year more to complete. Not every kid is the same and it is better our system become more flexible and responsive in this regard. He/She might even be able to take 1-2 non-serious stress relief courses. I took a course on modern literature writing in college and it was one of the best investments of my time I ever had…..

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 27 Oct 2015 09:06

Theo sir: you are absolutely right. 5 courses per semester is full load - especially if homework problems are set at the correct level of difficulty. The problem sets usually re five problems or more which need to be worked on over the week concurrent with the lectures - 2 x 1.5 hrs or 3 x 1 hr - per week. Usually the problem sets are due on The first day of the class the next week. The schedule is TTh for 2 x 1.5 or MWF for the other. Students are expected to come prepared for the class (they should read the prerequisites before coming to the class, not take any notes during the class) and attend any readings classes during the week. If there are 7-8 courses per semester (or even as low as 6), each subject can only be skimmed. Only genius level people can cope up with such a punishing schedule. There are some I have had the good fortune to have one such person as my roommate/batchmate and know a couple of others. Those kinds are one in a million or even one in crore (ten million).

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 28 Oct 2015 04:28

May be it is time for the children of the lesser gods to enroll into second line IITs and IIMs. We don't want our education system be driven by only those creamy brainy einstonion bosons.

we want onlee naarmal naarmal people for naarmal nirmal jobs. we should not expand these institutions, but enrich them for the cream. let the butter and ghee be taken away for the hard working elite middle class who needs more protein and carbs.

take away is: We need more edus for the middle! leave the IITs alone for the rich creams. Please move to provide milk for the mass edu! newer institutions, curriculum and standards needed. 80% of industrial and gov project sanctions must go to such institutions, and 20% of cream can remain with the cream. [The percent is for numbers onlee , and not funds

]

sorry for this merit based thought, and bashing the quota system.

gakakkad · Post by **gakakkad** » 28 Oct 2015 04:42

I agree about the course load...If too much is stuffed in , it will not stay there...will be a waste of time...should never be more than 4-5 course /sem ..

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 28 Oct 2015 05:11

It is 21 credits on average per semester in IITs and also IISERs. The latter allow for a minimum of 18 credits and a maximum of 25 credits per semester. It is a doable course load. We used to do 4 courses (theory papers only) and labs each semester just for the major subject in Honours. For minor subjects it was 2 courses for each minor for BSc(Hons). BTech requirements are similar. The four courses in the major subject were paired together for exams...like Thermodynamics and Acoustics or Mathematical Methods & Mechanics, Electrodynamics and Optics...with a Part I and a PartII which would be more advanced by the 3rd years. Mechanics, Optics and Electrodynamics and MathPhysics were two part courses. In the midst of all this some people did find time to do their politics.

Don't ask me how...and did well too in studies...

http://www.iiserpune.ac.in/userfiles/fi ... ug2013.pdf

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 29 Oct 2015 00:01

AAAhhhh! so that was the secret to get those cGPA as 10!!!!

politics!

Kakkaji · Post by **Kakkaji** » 07 Nov 2015 06:32

An island of priviledge falls

School quota for babu kids off

New Delhi, Nov. 6: Sanskriti School, set up on government land in the heart of Delhi in 1995 by a society formed by the wives of top bureaucrats, will no longer be able to reserve the bulk of its seats for children of civil servants.

Delhi High Court today quashed the school's 60 per cent quota for children of Group A officers - officers such as those of the IAS, IFS and IPS who enter central government service after clearing the civil services exam.

A division bench of Justices Pradeep Nandrajog and Mukta Gupta held that the school using State land and State funds in its creation would partake the character of the State. It quoted Article 14 of the Constitution that says the State shall not deny to any person equality before the law.

Article 14, when telescoped into Article 21A that provides for free and compulsory education for all children between 6 and 14 years old, would support the interpretation that all students in this age group must be treated equally by educational institutions, it said.

Sanskriti School was set up in Chanakyapuri, the capital's diplomatic enclave, on 7.78 acres provided by the government for a token sum of Re 1 and with a contribution of Rs 15.945 crore by various ministries.

Besides reserving the bulk of its seats for Group A officers' children, it charges them nearly 40 per cent less fees than other children. While the annual fee for 2013-14 for children of Group A officers was Rs 72,443, that for others was Rs 1,12,960.

The school was conceptualised in 1995 by the wives of the then cabinet secretary, secretaries in the ministries of external affairs and commerce and 10 other IAS, IRS, IPS and Indian Railway Technical Service officers. They formed the Civil Services Society with the principal aim of establishing schools for children of officers of the All India and Central Services, with a clarification that other children could be admitted if extra seats were available.

Lawyer Ashok Agrawal, who has been fighting cases on violation of the Right to Education Act, said this judgment would discourage setting up of elite schools with reservation for wards of those setting up the school.

sum · Post by **sum** » 20 Nov 2015 11:18

X-post:

sum wrote:^^ Not very pretty reading:

As machines become intelligent, where does India stand?

But India is lacking… Let us start by looking at academic research. We do find pockets of excellence. There is some critical mass of machine learning researchers in IISc. They can collaborate to tackle hard and interesting problems and publish world class results. Also, in some of the IITs, such as IIT Delhi, we find some people in machine learning including those who have returned with a foreign education. IKDD CODS [11], a conference in data science with world class standards, started in India in 2013.

Objectively, we looked at the total papers in the top 13 machine learning conferences in the last 15 years (see figure 1). All put together, India produces lesser papers than a single world class university in China – the Tshingua university. We do one-third of Carnegie Mellon University of USA. Our total research papers have been 745, China is 3956 and USA is 19,000+. We rank 15th by the number of documents we produce, with a Singapore, a Spain, an Israel and a Canada bettering us (see figure 2). We have a lot to catch up and only a disruptive mission based approach can make this happen.

Let us look at industrial research, where the picture is even starker. China produces 10x more papers, with Singapore being twice and US being 50 times ahead. New companies [12] are the engine of growth and have the potential to create disruption and maximum business value. In India, we could only find 12 papers from 5 startups in the last 15 years! One of it is Aspiring Minds - our work on programming assessment and spoken English assessment at KDD. Another notable is Strand Life Sciences, with some high quality work in Bioinformatics, Infibeam in e-commerce and S&I Engineering pushing the frontiers in computer vision. Both Strand and SI are companies that came out of IISc and are great examples to emulate. Compare this to USA or China: a Linkedin has 17, Facebook 15, a Baidu 22, Alibaba 4, Tencents 3, Renren 2 followed by a long tail of companies. No wonder MIT Technology Review’s top 50 smartest companies have 7 out of the top 10 from US, 3 from China and none from India! One may note that much of the open source software and libraries for storing, handling, searching and analyzing big data has come from new companies and not universities. The same is true for recommender systems to an extent [13].

Startups need to invest in research specifically in the area of machine learning. They need to follow the examples of (and even outperform) a Facebook, a Baidu, a Tencents and an Aspiring Minds. These companies have separate data science research groups. This will let them have a sustainable business edge, be disruptive and globally competitive. Otherwise, they we will be ripped off, once again [14], by new innovations happening in other parts of the world. The speed of innovation and disruption is much faster now – we need to keep running to be at the same pace!

Vipul · Post by **Vipul** » 03 Dec 2015 00:49

Six new IITs to set up in Andhra Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Goa, Jammu and Kashmir, Kerala and Karnataka.

While the official statement did not give the name of the cities where the IITs would come up, sources said it is expected that the new institutes would come up in Tirupati, Palakkad, Jammu, Bhilai-Durg, Dharwar and Goa.
There are already 16 IITs one each at Gandhinagar, Bombay, New Delhi, Roorkee, Kharagpur, Chennai, Guwahati, Indore, Kanpur, Jodhpur, Bhubaneswar, Hyderabad, Patna, Ropar, Mandi and Varanasi.

negi · Post by **negi** » 06 Dec 2015 17:31

Goa already has a BITs pilani and NIT wonder who are these bright bulbs cramming in too many instis in such a small state , mind you nothing against Goa but India has a lot of states which do not have a IIT . KA and Kerala are big enough to get a IIT but again not in big cities .

Ashok Sarraff · Post by **Ashok Sarraff** » 06 Dec 2015 17:45

In contrast, Pune, eupemestically called the "Oxford of the East" has no IIT, IIM, NIT. It's an orphan city with bright and sincere people, but with little gravitas at the state or national levels.

negi · Post by **negi** » 06 Dec 2015 18:06

^ Pune is just living in past glory ; it was a hub for education and revolution in Tilak days but after independence nothing has happened there . Proximity to Bhaiwood city Mumbai has killed it's prospects.

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 06 Dec 2015 21:06

The Goa and Jammu IITs have not started operations yet, and both have no land allocated yet I think even though they were announced a year earlier. KL and AP campuses has started functioning already from this year.

Goa I think was politics motivated. Now that KA's is supposed to start next year or so in Dharwar next door to Goa, there is no need for an IIT in Goa. It may not be a bad idea to allocate that to another southern state like TN or even KA.

One of the first IISERs was setup in Pune along with Kolkata. IIT-B will need to expand in another two decades and the natural expansion will be another sister campus in Pune as the Pune-Mumbai corridor becomes one large metropolis with just the Ghats separating them. Pune has a lot of central govt institutes only next to Bengaluru and Hyderabad perhaps.

No one talks of Indore/Bhopal as these cities are never in the news. But they have an IIT/IIM and IISER allocated too. Vast spaces to build on and a few national centers like RRCAT close by.

Supratik · Post by **Supratik** » 06 Dec 2015 21:28

IISERs funding have been increased to 1000 crores each.

kmkraoind · Post by **kmkraoind** » 08 Dec 2015 10:35

Got Rs. 50 lakh? Then buy a school - The Hindu

In a serene neighbourhood in Bengaluru, about 9 kilometres from the international airport, is a school spread over 2.5 acres. It has a total strength of 675 students, 100 teaching and non-teaching staff, and offers State and ICSE syllabi.

The school posted these details on an online classified website, not to attract parents, but to lure potential buyers. In fact, it’s not the only one to do so. At least a dozen private unaided schools, most of them State board, are offering to sell as they are unable to manage their finances and pay their staff. This does not include pre-primary schools. Seven Bengaluru schools have already seen a change in management this academic year.

member_29004 · Post by **member_29004** » 08 Dec 2015 17:59

kmkraoind wrote:Got Rs. 50 lakh? Then buy a school - The Hindu

The managements of these struggling private schools say that, like their government counterparts, they have been affected by the Right to Education (RTE) Act, which mandates that every school reserve 25 per cent of the seats for students from lower-socio economic and disadvantaged backgrounds..

Thats the most important part. Translation - Hindu/ Secular run schools!

UlanBatori · Post by **UlanBatori** » 13 Dec 2015 18:24

SaiK wrote:http://www.thehindu.com/webexclusives/w ... epage=true
What has gone wrong with IIT-Madras?

The writer is studying Integrated MA in English Studies, Department of Humanities and Social Studies, IIT Madras

THAT's what is wrong with IITC. First of all the writer does not know the name of his/her/its own institution or the name of the city where it is located. Who allowed ppl studying "Integrated MAs" into an Institute of Technology? The rebuttal linked there is pretty pointed.

UlanBatori · Post by **UlanBatori** » 13 Dec 2015 18:36

Beloveds! I am in total

after finding out some realities in Malloostan. Until fairly recently, the guvrmand madarssas aka Model Schools were a dominant presence: 2000 to 3000 students in grades 5-10 in each school. Used to dominate the top ranks at the SSLC exam...

No longer. I find that one ancient and highly revered school (MBHS TCR) now has a total of 300 students. The 5th grade has only 10 students. Apparently the Babus are in cahoots with Unions to get the place ready to sell, since it is on prime real estate. MGHS across the road is in bad shape too, perhaps even worse.

Any insights? Who does one write to, to light fire under a few musharrafs?

Thinking about it, the major change seems to be that these schools which charge minimal fees, and provided the one great avenue of opportunity and upward mobility for the poorest, have come under the diktat of the local guvrmand (not state). IOW, the corrupt stinkers at the local level. They see the prime real estate and salivate. So they are more or less deliberately running the schools into the ground. It is pretty blatant: relations between admin and PTA /Alumni association in the pits, rejecting all efforts to help the schools develop.

This is an unforgivable crime on the part of the local government.

chaanakya · Post by **chaanakya** » 13 Dec 2015 21:37

UlanBatori wrote:
SaiK wrote:http://www.thehindu.com/webexclusives/w ... epage=true
What has gone wrong with IIT-Madras?

The writer is studying Integrated MA in English Studies, Department of Humanities and Social Studies, IIT Madras
THAT's what is wrong with IITC. First of all the writer does not know the name of his/her/its own institution or the name of the city where it is located. Who allowed ppl studying "Integrated MAs" into an Institute of Technology? The rebuttal linked there is pretty pointed.

Its still known as IIT-M , M for Madras, just like High Court Madras. They have not changed their names.

Sachin · Post by **Sachin** » 14 Dec 2015 15:20

UlanBatori wrote:No longer. I find that one ancient and highly revered school (MBHS TCR) now has a total of 300 students. The 5th grade has only 10 students. Apparently the Babus are in cahoots with Unions to get the place ready to sell, since it is on prime real estate. MGHS across the road is in bad shape too, perhaps even worse.

Any reasons you found for the same? One common claim I hear is that people now have the money to send their kids to privately managed educational establishments. The same TCR which you mentioned has at least 3-4 schools which are managed by private entities (and not all of them are Church managed ones). There is also a feeling that the central syllabus (ICSE or CBSE) is more suited for the "aspiring" (read it as folks who want to become Daaktar, Ingineer) students. All kind of leading to a situation that the people have lost hope on the government's plan to give a good basic education. http://education.kerala.gov.in/ is the web site for the Edu.Dept, by the way.

member_28108 · Post by **member_28108** » 14 Dec 2015 18:00

Actually now both state and CBSE follow the same NCERT syllabus for core subjects in high school and PUC

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 14 Dec 2015 20:10

Maybe that is what we have to do... gov schools adopt to one of these syllabus CBSE (prefer), ICSE. That way, it ensures parents are still getting a TFTA education for their SDRE kids. This is a social responsibility move, hopefully, the ever open for challenges Mrs. Irani.

UB ji, hit the nail straight where it hurts the most. Shoot it off to @smritiirani

UlanBatori · Post by **UlanBatori** » 14 Dec 2015 21:04

One common claim I hear is that people now have the money to send their kids to privately managed educational establishments.

Yes, I too heard that. I found that to be most stunning claim of all - coming from local residents. The depth of insensitivity IMO - that the people who are too poor to afford the fine uniforms and baksheesh etc etc of the private schools, are not even visible. Can anyone who thinks for a moment believe that everyone in Trissur is so rich that they would say

to Free Education?
Worse than

Why don't the peasants eat cake?

Look at the number of mothers working as housemaids because they have no other way to feed their kids. Can they afford to send their kids to private schools? (Actually I know 1 or 2 whose kids made it to getting selection to an MDA program - except that they had no way to pay for it).

The "no kids 2 b found" excuse is one advanced by the admins who are in cahoots with the real estate developers to get the govt schools shut down and sold off.

I asked knowledgeable ppl whether kids who came out of guvrmand SSLC+2 had a chance to get in the eye eye chais or En eye chais. Apparently sure, lots and lots of examples.

Amber G. · Post by **Amber G.** » 15 Dec 2015 21:04

Just to keep perspective .. when all is said and done, IIT's sometimes do produce people like Manu Prakash..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8cF5QPPmWU

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 18 Dec 2015 10:19

http://www.iisertvm.ac.in/pages/upcoming_campus.phpx

Not at all impressed by the architecture and layout. We need to be more imaginative while building new campuses, rather be stuck in the old mold of the 60s era architecture.

Supratik · Post by **Supratik** » 18 Dec 2015 19:08

Its all lowest bidder stuff for govt buildings. This is at least better than some of the soviet era things they built previously. Unless they start spending money on educational infra things will not look like they do in advanced countries.

kmkraoind · Post by **kmkraoind** » 23 Dec 2015 08:56

Massive Open Online Courses

Government of India has approved a scheme for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to provide best quality e-learning resources to students across country. An Indian platform called Study Webs of Active-Learning for Young Aspiring Minds (SWAYAM) is being developed for hosting of MOOCs. SWAYAM-MOOCs project is intended to address the needs of school level 9-12 to Under Graduate and Post Graduate students, covering all disciplines. About 2000 courses shall be launched, with a support from network/Cloud that can support 10 Lakh concurrent users and up to 3 Crores Learners.

The Government plans to recognize certificates issued via SWAYAM platform in the country. To enhance digital learning in the country, Government has approved National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NMEICT) in the year 2009, to provide high quality personalized and interactive knowledge modules over the internet/intranet for all learners in Higher Educational Institutions in anytime anywhere mode. Through this scheme the Ministry is providing connectivity to all colleges and Universities and providing high quality e-content free of cost.

This information was given by the Union Human Resource Development Minister, Smt. Smriti Zubin Irani yesterday in a written reply to the Lok Sabha question.

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 24 Dec 2015 00:06

This does belong here as it caters to Indian education after all.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indi ... 295648.cms

Over the past decade or so, there has been an explosion of engineering colleges in the (undivided) Andhra Pradesh. By some accounts, the state has more than 700 engineering colleges, with more than 300,000 seats, a third of which are unfilled because supply exceeds demand. The thousands of students graduating from these dodgy colleges are poorly skilled to even land a job in India.

But the United States is an attractive destination because a few Chinese-American entrepreneurs have engineered a business model to take advantage of this massive overflow of "engineers" who want to migrate to America, "higher education" being just an excuse. So for $20,000 (close to Rs 14 lakh at current exchange rates), institutions such as SVU and NWP lower the bar for students to gain admission to their courses (sans any rigor with regards to qualifying tests such as GRE or GMAT), facilitate their post-degree job search, and mainstream them in the US.

Remarkably, the institutions have very few Chinese students (compared to Indians), although some students at NWP said they also had Pakistani classmates.

Because the institutions are complaint with respect to accreditation and faculty in a poorly regulated system, they are able to generate the I-20 and other documentation, which enables applicants to get a legitimate F-1 student visa from US embassies and consulates in India. Typically, consular officials have little reason to deny them student visas if they meet all criteria including valid admission and financial security in accredited institutions.

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 11 Jan 2016 17:48

https://www.studyinternational.com/news ... ion-crisis

Only 18 percent of India’s youth between the ages of 18 and 21 are currently enrolled at university, a number the government hopes to boost to 30 percent by the year 2020. In order to accommodate the expansion, there would need to be a further 14million university places to fill, extending the current 26million positions to approximately 40million.

...
Between 1983 and 2013, the number of specialist engineering institutions in India grew by 20 percent a year, requiring 30 times the number of trained faculty members to meet supply and demand over the same period of time. In reality, numbers of staff merely doubled, forcing private institutions to hire staff lacking in adequate qualifications and experience.

Vadivel · Post by **Vadivel** » 26 Jan 2016 12:24

Just 20% engineers in India employable, best from Delhi, Bihar-Jharkhand: Study

Even as India aspires to be a major economic power in the next few years, the quality of engineers produced by the colleges leave a lot to be desired. According to the third edition of the National Employability Report for Engineers, less than 20% of those graduating from the colleges are employable for software jobs while a minuscule 7.49% are competent enough to be employed for core engineering jobs.

The best engineers come from Delhi, Bihar-Jharkhand and Uttarakhand. Punjab, which was ranked much lower in 2011, has also moved up and is now among the states with the best quality of engineers. West Bengal has fallen to the 2nd Quartile (75 to 50 percentile bin). Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh continue to lurk in the bottom 25 percentile bin, given the large number of engineering colleges, and as a result have a very poor quality of engineers. While Karnataka has shifted from the bottom quartile to the 3rd Quartile (50 to 25 percentile), Maharashtra has jumped upwards one quartile.

Punjab, which was ranked much lower in 2011, has also moved up and is now among the states with the best quality of engineers.

The research looked at the employability according to states where the different engineering campuses are located. The states were placed in four bins in the decreasing order of employability i.e. the states with highest employability percentages were placed in the Top 25 percentile bin while those with lower employability percentages were placed in following bins.

In a day and age when startups are believed to be the 'in thing', very few engineers want to work for startups. Only around 6% of engineers have startup companies as their first job preference. If we consider those who are both employable and aspire to work with startups, the number decreases to 1.9%. Hence, startup companies shall have a very hard time attracting and hiring students for their organization.

As per the report, out of the 6,00,000 engineers that graduate annually, only 18.43% are employable for the Software Engineer-IT services role, while a dismal 3.95% are appropriately trained to be directly deployed on projects. For core jobs in mechanical, electronics/electrical and civil engineering, only a mere 7.49% are employable. In contrast, 53% engineers have software role as the most preferred job, whereas 44% prefer core engineering jobs. This means 97% engineers want jobs either in software or core engineering.

Firstly, an economy with a large percent of unemployable qualified candidates is not only inefficient, but socially unstable. Secondly, there is a large mismatch in the aspirations of graduating engineers and their job readiness, which can create large-scale dissatisfaction and disillusionment.
1

Employability varies tremendously across colleges. For instance, colleges in tier 1 cities have 18.26% employable software engineers, whereas for those in tier 2 cities, it goes down to 14.17%. Similarly, the states at the top have employability as high as 40.42%; those at the bottom have it at 12.03%.

Despite this variation we find that 53% of employable candidates for IT services companies and 25% of employable candidates for IT product companies are studying beyond the top 750 colleges, and thus end up being invisible to most employers. This signals that potentially a large proportion of employable engineers are ending up without any opportunity - a dangerous trend for higher education. There is a need for methods to drive meritocracy in the employment ecosystem to get jobs to all employable students irrespective of their college, city, gender, etc.

Lack of adequate domain knowledge is the key reason for low employability in core job roles in both software and non-software domains.

Employability of Computer/IT engineers in Software Engineer- IT Product role is a meagre 3.21% while it is 7.49% for design engineer role in fields such as mechanical, electrical/electronic and civil engineering. The key reason behind such paltry employability percentages is inadequate preparation in the domain area, i.e. the ability to apply basic principles of say, computer engineering or mechanical engineering to real world problems.

As much as 91.82% computer/IT engineers and 60% engineers from other engineering branches fall short of the desired domain knowledge required for such roles. These concepts and principles are there in college curriculum, however there is a gap in teaching and learning pedagogy being followed in majority of colleges.

http://www.ibnlive.com/news/india/just- ... 94608.html

kmkraoind · Post by **kmkraoind** » 23 Feb 2016 19:49

Political And Religious Discrimination By Teachers And How Students Are Lured - Swarajyamag

No words, just shocked to read such stories. I think its better to close down all Humanities Departments, money spent on them is waste, they are not giving back to India in any form. At least we can save some youngsters from Jihadi-Commie influence.

If Smriti Irani takes these Commie-Jihadis (I know its an uphill task) and succeeds in her endeavor, history will remember her forever.

Shankari Sundaram, as a teacher, specialises on China and eastern Asia at the Centre of International Studies’ Centre for International Politics, Organisation and Disarmament (CIPOD) of JNU. Within this centre, there is the Centre for Indo-Pacific Studies. In this sub-centre, there was a student who was the topper in the written examination in the first year of his MPhil. The written section carries 70 marks. In the viva voce section, with a maximum possible score of 30, Sunadaram asked this student to explain India’s “Look East” policy. The student, who speaks so well that the teacher cannot use the alibi of bad presentation to downgrade him, credited inter alia Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a push to India’s diplomatic relations in the Pacific region with a focus on ASEAN countries. Sundaram gave him a score of 1 out of 30.

The poor chap had fared so well in the written part that his promotion to the next year could not be stopped. But the abysmal score in the oral exam brought his overall ranking down; he is now struggling to find hostel accommodation in the campus.

Moushumi Basu is an Associate Professor and CIPOD’s coordinator with the Equal Opportunity Office (EOO) of JNU. Several students have heard her boasting of having reached out to Parliament House attack convict Afzal Guru at the Tihar Jail when he was alive. She says she used to carry food to the criminal on death row. During one such chat in the campus, a student dismissed pooh-poohed her ‘feat’. When it was this otherwise promising girl’s turn to face the oral exam for her MPhil, Basu gave her a grade of 4.7 whereas a minimum of 5 is required to move to the next year. This student is an OBC.

Supratik · Post by **Supratik** » 23 Feb 2016 20:01

This is why you need to ban all political activity by faculties.

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 23 Feb 2016 20:09

^^ Yes, I concur with the above. All left, center and right politics needs to be banned in all educational institutions. Taxpayer money should not be used to cultivate political vote banks and sheep for the future.

Supratik · Post by **Supratik** » 23 Feb 2016 20:36

I will qualify that. Student politics is OK with appropriate restrictions. There should be a compulsory guideline of what is and is not acceptable. These students will decide the future of the country. It will be a disaster if we produce only Burger King and dating type of zombies that we see in the west. However, faculties are in a position of power which can be misused and therefore political activity by faculties should be banned.

member_28108 · Post by **member_28108** » 23 Feb 2016 20:43

Sorry theses students do not need to indulge in politics where the typical goondaism starts. In Karnataka they ahd to ban these when we were students when murders etc occurred. I think the campuses became quiter and I don't think that any of these students are any less politically aware than those with student unions. The job of students is to primarily study. Not politick. If they want to do that they can do that in their free time or join full time political parties.

member_28911 · Post by **member_28911** » 23 Feb 2016 23:39

rhytha wrote:Just 20% engineers in India employable, best from Delhi, Bihar-Jharkhand: Study

That's because Delhi has arguably one of the top 3 Engineering Colleges in India (IITD, DTU, NSIT) and one pretty good women only college - IGIT. This improves quality.

Then there are numerous private colleges affiliated to Indraprastha University with a pretty decent 'University School' run by IP University (in old campus of my alma matter).

Raja Ram · Post by **Raja Ram** » 24 Feb 2016 13:22

Cross posting from GD forum - giving a synopsis of RSS and other Nationalist organizations involved in Education

The RSS has two trusts Vivekananda Educational Society and Vivekananda Educational Trust that run thousands of schools. The way I understand it operates is as follows:

1. Any rashtrawadi person, usually a Swayamsevak, or well wisher of RSS can start a school which is based on Dharmic & Indian ethos. Once it is running and established, these persons generally give the ownership of the school to one of the two trusts who in turn nominate a group that may include the original donor to run the school.

There are a lot of standards and values that are then brought to bear in these schools. The schools are generally catering to the most vulnerable parts of the society and are very moderately priced and often free to deserving. Admissions are open to all Indians. There is a formal structure of the Society that has a proper governance over all schools run by the two Societies. If you go to the RSS website, you can get further details.

2. There is a separate organization called Ekal Vidyalayas - one teacher schools that cater to the most inaccessible villages and tribal areas of India. These are once again run by dedicated teachers specifically trained to provide basic education at these remote places. Completely run by charities from Swayamsevaks and CSR contributions. The largest benefactor of this is Subash Chandra of Zee Group who is also a Chairman of this organization. There are close to 50000 such schools.

3. In addition to what RSS does the Chinmaya Mission, the Narayana Guru Mission, The Siddhaganga mission, The DAV Group, The Kanchi Matta Sankara schools, the Ramakrishna Mission Schools, the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Group etc are all providing nationalistic school networks.

4. Besides this there is a Pune based organization started by some of the Sangh affiliated that have a 60 year plan of reforming education and bringing back Indian Education Systems and Pedagogy that is suited for India. They are doing a lot of ground breaking work and have created a sort of Network of educationists and educational institutions.

What is important is that these organizations and their efforts get our support, they get more publicised and the government supports their growth in ways that it does not bring them under the government's ambit. Here too the battle is a tough one with the RTE, nationalization of education and entrenched leftist academia putting up hurdles in every way possible.

I have been interacting with some of these institutions and very impressed with their clear headed thinking. They are not obscurantist harking back to a bygone age but practical people with a ear close to the ground. They may not have all the support that is needed but are doing a commendable job silently and effectively.

Those on this forum who are in India and those who are abroad, I request you all to move from intent to action. Please take the time to get to know these institutions and if possible contribute and help them. It is a duty that we owe to our next generation and to the nation. In a way, it is the need of the hour.

Just my thoughts and the usual ramble. For what it is worth.

vera_k · Post by **vera_k** » 27 Feb 2016 08:31

So what's the deal with JNU? It looks similar to the ads we used to see where "Kashmir University graduates after 1989 need not apply". When did this university go down the drain?

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 23 Mar 2016 22:32

IEEE has an article on an initiative to teach computers in Kenya

http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/at-w ... m-in-a-box

Has nice pictures.

Editors Note: This week IEEE Spectrum is covering CeBIT, the enormous information and communications technology show that takes place annually in Hanover, Germany. For up-to-the-second updates, you can follow our CeBIT Ninja, Stephen Cass, on Twitter (@stephencass), or catch daily highlights throughout the week here.

Founded in 2013, BRCK is a Kenyan company that makes a rugged router designed for places with poor communications or power infrastructure. It can act as a traditional WiFi access point, but if a wired connection goes out or is simply not available, the router can switch over to cellular networks. Power outages are compensated for by an 8-hour battery. But now the company has gone beyond its basic product with the launch in September 2015 of BRCK Education and its US $5,000 Kio Kit.

The Kio Kit is an almost literal turnkey connected classroom: A water-resistant trunk-sized travel case contains 40 Kio 7-inch tablets and a BRCK router. The travel case wirelessly each charges each tablet, and the whole unit can be charged from either a wall outlet, solar power, or even a car battery. The tablets come pre-loaded with educational software chosen by the purchaser, which can be a mix of free and paid material from providers such as the Kahn Academy or eKitabu, a Kenyan e-book company. Updates can provided through the cloud when connectivity is available.

BRCK’s business development manager, Alex Masika, was at CeBIT to present early results from Kio Kit deployments at the invitation of the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development. Since January, Kio Kits have been sold into schools in Kenya, Tanzania, and the Solomon Islands, with additional orders coming in from Sudan, and queries from many other countries around the globe including the United States.

“The impetus for BRCK Education was the lack of education around the world, with hundreds of millions of kids going without,” says Masika. Educational content was available, but existing set of tools, such as typical consumer-grade tablets, “wasn’t able to address the challenges faced in Africa with power and connectivity,” he adds. Even something as basic as charging multiple mobile devices proved difficult in many schools, so BRCK tried to develop an all-in-one-solution with an emphasis on durability. The tablets are designed to survive a drop of least 70 centimeters, and “we haven’t had report of a single broken screen yet,” says Masika. Other touches—such as color coding the headphones yellow to make them easy to identify when giving instructions—were designed to make the system as hassle-free for teachers as possible.

Masika, who is currently looking for investors and industry partners who can help scale up production and distribution of the Kio Kit, notes that one thing he’d like to see is Kio Kits popping up in places like refugee camps along with other emergency infrastructure like tents. In the meantime, the Nairobi-based Kio Kit and BRCK engineers and designers are continuing to improve the system based on user feedback

Same time yesterday BBC had released its ARM powered Micro computer kits which are similar to Raspberry PI II in US.

sum · Post by **sum** » 29 Mar 2016 06:10

This paper makes for scary reading about the Indian edu system. The numbers looks downright grim:
Falling through the cracks and bridging the gap – India and USA showing similar trends